“Take off your mind,” he yelled, waving and smiling. His push-lawnmower was running, the wind whistled in my ears as my bike down-hilled past, and his shambling gait and overenthusiastic shouts in previous passings had brought me to wonder whether he faced mental as well as physical challenges (not, to tell from the standard exchanges in a workaday elevator these days, that either shambles or over/underenthusaism is any sort of marker to mark on).  But whether I misheard, he misspoke, or indeed we established lockstep communication in that 3-second interchange: the phrase has roiled in my head ever since.

So I figure I’ll make it my 40′s swansong.  In honor of the various meanings, explicit and implicit, in honor of my unknown neighbor and his perennial good-cheer (whatever other characteristics he might possess), and in honor of a good decade done, this:

“Changing your mind,” that old saw that was old when I was young, has a certain dubious, not to say casual, ring to it, with the unstated implication that flip-flops are inevitable.  One can change one’s mind – and then change it back – about anchovies vs. bell peppers on the takeout, or what flavor breath mint would best suite the next well-coffee’d meeting-room, or whether to stick with PowerPoint or segue (uneasily, feeling one’s bones creak) into Prezi.  One can even change one’s mind, back-and-forth, about the hot-button topic-of-the-day, without much angst (as long as there is no personal involvement).

But what of the more serious stuff of life?  What if change digs deeper into the psyche; if change seems to encompass one’s all, and, perhaps, to be irreversible – or – more accurately – to lead one down the path of continuing change?

Somewhere late in the ’40′s, I took off my mind.  Yep.  That sums it up.  What I once thought was an irrevocable choice, I found was not.  The paths chosen, it turned out, branched delightfully toward multiple new venues. What was established fact when I entered my 40′s was unimaginably altered, stepping (happily, delightedly, blythely) into my 50′s: different job, different partner, transitions handled, kids wonderfully grown.

Not to say it was all good, all well-done, or (omg no) all finished.  But.

I took off my mind.  And it was fabulously freeing.

Happy decade to all, whichever it is and wherever you lie in its trajectory.

And……..from this quinquagenarian:

Take it from me:

Take off!

Yesterday I encouraged my tween to take in some compelling propaganda that highlights, condones and/or actively encourages the perspective that women are weak, men are the protectors, sexual relations are controlled by the male, male spousal abuse is a forgivable aspect of their innate character, and good and evil are identifiable and tinged with racist overtones.

My 12-year-old and her friends are pretty sophisticated propaganda consumers at this point in their 21^st-Century upbringing, so they were aware of and had their own opinions of the whole ‘weak female’ controversy – but the domestic violence and racist aspects of the Twilight/New Moon juggernaut (and I’m presuming few between here and Ouagadougou wouldn’t have recognized my topic) were new and startling for me.  Not having read the books (I can’t stomach Meyers’ execrable prose), I was unprepared for the scene where main protagonist Bella, torn between her Aryan vampire lover and the Native American werewolf aspirant for her affections, visits the latter’s lair.  A number of highly-pumped shirtless young men sit at a table, served lovingly by Bella’s counterpart, a dark-skinned female.  Turning from the counter to provide fresh-baked cookies to the joking males, the werewolf’s human female reveals a face raked by scars.  She moves about offering food, smiling and gently kidding the guys.  The scene closes on a warm kiss with her boyfriend.  Later, it’s explained that in an uncontrolled fit of pique he’d injured her because she was “standing too close.”

I asked the tweens whether there was any further exposition in the book. Had she rebelled? Was there indictment of his behavior, or retributive measures from his clan?  If there was, the girls didn’t recall it.  “It was just a quick thing,” explained the oldest and most sophisticated of the group.  “He was just angry, and she was too close to him.  He was sorry afterward.”  I was slack-jawed.  This very bright and thoughtful girl on the verge of young womanhood (daughter of a feminist university professor and a equality-minded lawyer), had just mouthed something  out of a bygone rule book.  Postulated a concept that was dated even when I was their age in 1973. 

I can handle the perspective that female blood is an uncontrolled, lust-inducing exudate against whose lure a moral male must summon superhuman control, and that such moral men must be consistently vigilant to protect females from men of lesser fiber.  The metaphor is so obvious and awkward as to be laughable, and laughingly sloughed off.  Also humorous and worthy of jesting discussion is the concept that the ‘change’ from human to vampire (aka loss of virginity) is a ‘death’ which is rightly put to vote before the family of the male.  I can even take the precept that the moral male agrees to such a death only if marriage is accepted (the entire tween audience swooned as the question was posed.  My own jaw dropped even lower.  He’ll allow her to change into a vampire if she agrees to lifelong partnership with her violator/savior? This is 2009?  I’m not sitting in some sort of timewarp tunnel to the 1950s?).  But okay.  I can take all that.  Worthy fodder for discussion with this next generation of females.

But that male violence issue.  That’s a bit of a poser.  That might require a public protestation or two.  That might beg the suggestion that the next benefit for ‘My Sister’s Place’ employ a poster of the ravaged face of this beautiful young actress, and a flaming title slashed at the mid-point:  “THIS ISN’T UNDYING LOVE.  IT’S SELF-HATE.”

Ms. 8:  (suspiciously) Mommy, did you clean up my room?
Me: Yeah, honey, a little bit.  I folded a few of those shirts from your floor.
Ms. 8:  (satisfied) I thought so.  There were some pieces of blank space that I didn’t put in here.

A philosopher friend asked how it’s possible to hold high standards (which, being high, cannot ever be met) and simultaneously be happy.

I thought about that.  This is what I thought:

I’m not sure it’s impossible to hold standards and live happily.  I believe devout religious believers do this – at least some do – because for them, happiness IS the standard, and the quest to achieve the standard is part of a voyage that, although it cannot end in success, will nevertheless (if you’re good) get you far enough for those Pearly Gates (even if God cannot be scientifically proven to exist, it IS apparently scientifically proven that believing in Him makes you happier.  Quite the quandary right there.)

For those of us with the sense that the mortal coil is all we’ve got, things get stickier.  Today’s stickiness (just today’s, just anecdotally): I’m sitting on the sofa after work and dinner, laptop in hand, writing a volunteer-related email.  Ms. 8‘s bugging me.  Really bugging me.  She wants quality time with her Mom.  I don’t have it to give.  I want organizing time and email time and just plain me-time, damnit.  I’m laughing falsely and typing and trying to hold it together.  I click the wrong thing and open up the NYT.  Front image:  all those white-wrapped dead children in Gaza.  Jeeezusfuckinchr…..!  A million things pour through the mind.  Hamas’ cold-bloodedly calculating strategies about firing from the protection of the populace.  Israel’s dreams, perennially upheld behind blood-soaked barricades.  US sanctimonious complicity.  My own willingness to shut eyes, shut purse, turn away.  All those grieving parents.  All those mothers, just like me….Ms. 8 comes around the edge of the computer.  “What’s that, Mommy?”  “The newspaper, honey.” I close the laptop.  I follow her into the kitchen.  She’s skipping.  How can one ever find happiness in so ephemeral a moment as this one small, happy child-skip instant, lost in a morass of my own – and my society’s – inadequacies?  Oh, God.  Or, no, wait – He doesn’t exist.

Ms. almost-11 (teary-eyed, screaming):  Mom, it was a mistake! I’m great at math!  Math is easy for me!

Me (teeth-clenched sotto voce): Honey – I’ll look into it, but I’m sure your teachers are grading consistently.  You need to understand that sometimes you just don’t do A work.

Ms. Almost:  Friend X and Friend Y got A’s, and they’re worse than me!  I know they made a mistake!  I hate you!  You just don’t ever believe me!

Me (losing out a bit on the sotto):  Honey.  I will look into it.  And Then We Will Talk.

Dear Teacher:

Ms. Almost was extremely upset last night about her ‘B’ grade in math.  She insisted that she finds math easy and (of course!) that Friend X and Friend Y, who got A’s, are “a lot worse in math than I am!”  She also claims to have completed all the homework and to have done well on tests. 

I certainly realize that there’s a large number of potential reasons that she earned a grade that surprises her.  I think our key job at tonight’s parent-teacher conference will be to explain carefully and as thoroughly as possible why she got a B and how the grades are objectively derived using consistent criteria across all students.  I’ll do the best I can to support your explanation.  My goal is to assist her to accept that she did earn the grade she received (as opposed to having it given to her ‘by mistake’).  I’m looking for your help in doing this.

Thank you in advance for helping us to help Ms. Almost improve her performance,

Faith

Faith: After your email, I have looked over Almost’s grades and realize I have made a grave error.  I must have gotten lost on my grade book when I was recording grades and put the wrong letter grade down.  She does in fact have an A and we will quickly correct the error on her card.  I am soooooo sorry to have caused her undo stress. 

o_O

Sic passeth THAT life’s lesson…….

Wherever on the African continent I’ve touched down, when the plane door opens and conditioned European air dissipates in the cacophonous onrush of sub-Sahara, there’s the overriding scent of laterite dust.  Traveling afoot or in open-air vehicles, it gets in your hair, suffuses your clothes, tinges your sweat.  It’s ubiquitous and often unpleasant. 

The day I left Africa for the last time, I mourned the loss of laterite.  I spent those hours breathing consciously of it; with every inhalation reliving another golden memory.  The good, the difficult, the dangerous, the revelatory — all dust-wrapped and priceless.

If, right now, I were suddenly transported back, there would be nothing there of that last day’s supercharged emotion. Even if you mourn it often, and even if you return – you
never have the totality of a place-and-people in quite the same way as you had it for the flash of time just
before your departure.

Is anticipative nostalgia so painful because it is so fleeting?

I have a friend who’s leaving a long-time home he loves, where he has roots and family, obligations and adulation, on all sides.  Every time he turns around, there’s another farewell, another joking jibe belying teary eye, another lengthy embrace, another last look at a long-loved sight.  My friend’s a world traveler with plenty of relocation in his past, but he didn’t want to make this move right now.  There’s an angry ‘what-if’ patina on all his nostalgia.  He sees the final good-bye streaking toward him at unstoppable
speed.  He’s sad, he’s happy, he’s angry, he’s resolved, he’s
overwhelmed. 

The thing about ‘always having Paris’ (as a metaphor for any  loss of great magnitude), is that you actually don’t.  You only ‘have Paris’ in that fulgent instant just before you turn resolutely away from an abandoned dream:  the moment when you know, with all your soul, how precious it is; and, simultaneously, how integral to your being it was.

Heartache.

Repainting the shade-side of our rickety haybarn (plastered
to the steeply-angled ladder lover-like), everything was dim, grey, sticky and
precarious.  Except – suddenly – there was
a fairy-dance of light against the eaves: an ever-changing chiaroscuro as the
morning sun glanced on the muddy sheep-trough under the downspout.

Pause for the bigger picture.

Things are difficult right now. 

But no, no, not the usual way.  There’s no news of divorce,  money trouble, ailing children, or any known
untoward couplings (except for me and my paint-spattered aluminum ladder).

There’s rough stuff at the office.  A colleague, working around to “everything
might be okay in the end – or even a lot better “ (which it might; absolutely
it might) nevertheless said, to quote: 
“the human aspect is undeniably fucked
up.” 

The human aspect is undeniably easy to fuck up.  Everyone does.  Institutions are particularly prone.  And if we get out of this with that verdict, we will pretty much undeniably all be better off in the
end. 

The jury’s currently out on that one.

Seeking solace in metaphor, I was stricken by this morning’s
chance vision.  Out of sheep piss, drainwater,
and the blindingly steamy morning sun, off a weathered bit of aging
siding:  something glittering, pure,
lovely, and untainted.

Stop for that reflection.

(downslope) A strong-legged woman running under the star-studded sky, the wind in her mane, breathing deep of the night air

(upslope) A middle-aged female, unwashed locks sweat-soaked, her spare tires thudding fore and aft, gasping loud enough to drown the owls

Living on a winding, unpaved, dead-end country road leaves no excuse when other requirements overtake gym time.  I shut the door firmly on the heat and trot into the breezy dark.  Despite the encroaching cloudbank, moonrise seeps onto the black road, and overhead there’s a glittering arch: Orion, rising full-on to the southeast; Venus bright and golden almost overhead; the Pleiades, shimmering at the apex of the westward dive.

The road runs downslope.  Into icy wind I pace full-stride, bottoming out where the night-grazing steer gazes round-eyed, chewing his cud.  It’s cold.  A goose shrieks on one high, shrill note.  Then comes the steep incline.  When my 10-year-old and I do this together, at this point she’s laughing, chatting, stopping and gawking — and still keeping pace.  Personally, I maintain (in the face of ridicule) that as long as the fat’s jiggling up and down, there’s some positive effect.

Finally: a downward slope, past towering pines on the right.  The scent of loamy earth and sharp sap bite into the lungs with every gasp.  Wind whistles through the dried meadow on the left.  There’s a snort, a flash of white.  Some buck, having survived hunting season, is still wary. 

Ripping off the hat, breezes finger the scalp.  The neighboring farmhouse glistens in the night:  colored lights around the houseplants on the glass-encased porch, a yellow glow from the second story.

A gradual incline past the dark towering barn on the left, where the chickens sleep and the rusted stanchions and junk-strewn loft whisper into the dust of times past.  Around the curve, upslope: meadows on either side and the gleaming heavens bright and luminescent and close overhead.  The houses at road’s-end twinkle. I swing the elbows and do a snazzy little u-turn, giggling to myself.  Then the return.  Downslope.  Upslope.  Back into warmth and hot tea and family.

(this is the perfect moment, isn’t it?  Everything’s prepared, and wrapped, and the lights are on and the music playing and the anticipation building.  No opportunity for disappointment …. yet)

Ms. Ten:  Okay, Mom.  Can I have a chocolate truffle now?
Me:  Honey, I told you to finish your squash.
Ten:  I had two bites.
Me:  Please finish your squash.
Ten:  I’m full!  Can I have…
Me:  If you were really full of good healthy…blah blah blah….eat some more veget…blah blah ….can’t possibly fit …blah.
Ten:  Mom.  My healthy-stomach’s full.  It’s my sugar-stomach that’s hungry!

Six hours, non-stop office to D.C., gloaming turning swiftly
black in these longest nights of the year, fog on the heights where the
menacing semis loom and fade; inclines indicated by the rental’s groan into
high gear. 

Lonely, tired, missing the kids.  Too much caffeine, too much empty time in a
lifestyle otherwise bereft of a free moment. 
Peopling the passenger seat with an array of fantasy figures, real or
imagined: what conversations could occur in this LED intimacy surrounded by blackness
and fog; what unspoken connections, what lasting bonds?  Sans such companionship, the mind creates its
own: spins stories out of dreams and ghosts and bits and pieces of reality.

The reception, nearing a city, suddenly clear and evocative: 

Workin’ on our night
moves……
And oh the wonder
We felt the lightning
And we waited on the
thunder 

’76, Seger sweeping to fame on Night Moves, crossed the teen trajectory of me and how many others
on the road tonight: drivers grainy-eyed, line-faced, middle-aged behind a
wheel:  in trucking and sales and
management and the corner office.  How
many tuned in to the fog, the dark, the memory?

We were just young and
restless and bored
Livin’ by the sword
Tryin’ to lose the awkward
teenage blues
Workin’ on our night
moves
And it was summertime 

Soul’s summertime: back seats, bra
straps, fog on the windows: groping, seeking, panting energy, endless passion
for this and all else.

I used her, she used
me
But neither one cared 

Echoes of sixteen, when hear the song touched our
inexperience.  At 46, instead nostalgia flowers: 

I woke last night to
the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and
wondered
Started hummin’ a song
from 1962
Ain’t it funny how the
night moves
When you just don’t
seem to have as much to lose

The speed and the obscurity and the tune: 

Strange how the night
moves
With autumn closing in